


Displacement Activity

by sylviarachel



Series: Experiments, Negotiations, and Cups of Tea [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, POV John Watson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-01
Updated: 2013-10-01
Packaged: 2017-12-28 02:45:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/986745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylviarachel/pseuds/sylviarachel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's been hit in the head by a fleeing suspect. Sherlock takes care of him. </p><p>I don't know where all this fluff is coming from, I swear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Displacement Activity

There are a lot of unexpected things about sleeping with Sherlock Holmes, but one of the most unexpected is the way he’s suddenly more respectful of John’s personal space. He pauses before flinging himself down on the sofa in case John wants to move out of the way (he doesn’t); he asks before borrowing John’s laptop or helping himself from John’s plate; at crime scenes and in morgues, he gives John room to work instead of hovering annoyingly close to his elbow.

John’s surprised by how much he misses all that incidental contact.

He’s not the only one who’s noticed the change, he discovers when DI Lestrade takes him aside one night, after taking statements, and says, “Is he okay?”

John says, blankly, “Who?” (In his defence, it’s four in the morning and he’s been hit in the head twice.)

“Him,” Greg says, jerking his head in a vague direction. “Sherlock. He’s not been in your face all the time like he normally is. Are you two …” he looks acutely uncomfortable. “… having a bit of a tiff?”

“What?” says John. “No. No, of course not.”

“Ah.” Greg looks relieved, but also puzzled. “Okay then.”

“Er … we’ll be off home then,” says John, “unless … ?”

Lestrade just waves him away with a tired hand.

* * *

John collects Sherlock, stops him walking off with the contents of the victim’s desk drawer, and makes him produce a taxi from thin air in that annoying but very useful way he has. He gets into the back of the taxi, Sherlock gets in after him, and John leans his aching head back gratefully and sits still for the first time in what feels like days.

Sherlock sits on the other side of the seat, silent and self-contained.

“Sherlock,” John says quietly, after a while. “Is something bothering you?”

Sherlock looks at him. “Yes,” he says. “Obviously. You’re hurt. He _hurt_ you. And then he got away, so I couldn’t—” John sees him glance at the cabbie and edit out _throttle him with my bare hands_ in favour of “do anything about it. _And_ ,” petulantly, “no one will let me have any data. How am I meant to solve this case if _no one will let me have any data_?”

“Inspector Lestrade promised you full access to all the evidence tomo— well, later today, I mean,” John says soothingly. “It’ll keep till then.”

Sherlock pouts. It’s equal parts infuriating and adorable.

“I meant,” says John, persevering in the face of a strong desire to just grab Sherlock and snog him senseless, the cabbie be damned, “something between us. I’ve noticed that you’re … giving me a lot more space than you used to, and I’ve been wondering why.”

Sherlock raises his eyebrows. “You’re always going on about _boundaries_ ,” he says. “I’m trying to respect yours.”

“It’s just,” says John, oddly touched, “I sort of miss it.”

Sherlock doesn’t immediately reply, except by suddenly sliding across the seat of the cab so that he’s pressed against John from ankles to shoulders. In a gesture that’s already becoming automatic, John snakes one arm around Sherlock’s back and leans contentedly against his shoulder. Sherlock twists a little and buries his nose in John’s hair, carefully avoiding the sore places.

When he speaks, it’s so softly that John almost doesn’t hear him: “I used to manufacture opportunities to be close to you ‘by accident’ because that was the only way it was allowed. It annoyed you, but I pretended not to notice that because—”

“It didn’t annoy me,” John says, and cuddles closer. “Well,” he amends, after a moment’s thought, “it did annoy me when you took my laptop without asking and cracked my passwords.”

“John, a trained chimpanzee could crack your laptop passwords. _N0rthumb3rland5_ , honestly.”

“A trained chimpanzee would have better manners,” John retorts, but he’s smiling.

* * *

“Listen,” he says, as they’re climbing the stairs to their flat (slowly, because John is very, very tired and his head has several tiny men with jackhammers in it), “I appreciate that you’re trying to respect my boundaries. I really do. I just want you to know, if you ever feel like …” John fumbles with the doorknob longer than strictly necessary. “… like expressing affection in a physical way, you don’t have to worry that it’s going to annoy me. If I want you to stop, I’ll say so. Okay?”

Sherlock crowds him through the door of 221B and then up against the back of it.

“Like that?” he asks, several minutes later, pulling away from a breath-stopping deep kiss.

John hangs against the door for a moment, catching his breath: he is far too tired and possibly-concussed for this, but _God …!_

“Ye-es,” he says, teasing. “I like that. But also—”

Floating above the hot spark of _need_ , he reaches up to touch Sherlock’s shoulder – a light, casual touch, not _I want you desperately_ but _All right, love?_ “I like that, too.”

Sherlock’s eyes light with recognition. “Oh,” he says, and the just-for-John-Watson smile blooms over his face and makes John’s heart skip. “Good.”

Then he strides briskly away, shucking off his coat and scarf as he goes.

John, smiling fondly to himself, heads for the sofa, wondering if there’s any point in asking Sherlock to bring him an ice pack and the bottle of paracetamol. He’s just concluding that his best course of action is have a bit of a lie-down and then go and get them himself, when – to his utter astonishment – Sherlock bustles out of the kitchen and over to the sofa, stocking-footed now, carrying what proves to be bag of frozen peas wrapped in a tea-towel, the paracetamol, a glass of water and _an actual cup of tea_.

While John stares open-mouthed, he carefully configures the jury-rigged ice pack around the sore places on John’s head, places the steaming mug on the coffee table within reach of John’s left hand, shakes out two paracetamol tablets and hands them to John along with the glass of water.

“Thanks,” John manages, when he’s swallowed them.

Sherlock flops down on the opposite arm of the sofa, tangles his feet and ankles with John’s, and smiles beatifically.

“Ordinarily,” he says, “we would celebrate an escape from death by blunt-force trauma with some enthusiastic sex, because both of us find adrenaline arousing and because whenever someone tries to hurt you, I am forcibly reminded of how important you are.”

Another unexpected thing about their reconfigured relationship is that Sherlock, having decided to admit that he does in fact have feelings, will every so often dissect his feelings for John, out loud, in disconcertingly analytical detail. So John isn’t completely surprised by this outburst, but he’s curious to find out how it led to the tea.

“However, those paramedics who looked at your head before we left the crime scene issued a strongly worded directive to the effect that you are to refrain from strenuous physical activity at least until it’s clear that you’re not suffering from concussion. So,” and at this point Sherlock holds out his arms like an impresario, “instead, I’m expressing my enthusiasm for you in other ways.”

He looks enormously pleased with himself, and John can’t help laughing, even though this threatens to dislodge his carefully arranged frozen peas. “You,” he says, smiling up at Sherlock, “are ridiculous, and adorable, and I promise there will be lots of enthusiastic sex as soon as we’ve solved this case. After all, you wouldn’t want it to interfere with the work.”

For a moment Sherlock seems to be contemplating whether or not to be offended by this. Then he bounces up off the arm of the sofa, pulls out his phone, and starts pacing the sitting room and, John is about ninety-nine percent sure, sending pestering texts to Lestrade.

John reaches for his mug of tea, props it on his chest, and sips.


End file.
